Sodium rising

By CHARLIE BUTERBAUGH

NARROWSBURG, NY — After this year’s unrelenting winter, Tusten’s Water and Sewage Inspector Ronald Schalck found that salt levels in Narrowsburg wells have severely increased compared to previous post-winter results.

“My March results show the biggest increase in any three-month period since we began [in 1976] to test,” Schalck reported at the April 14 Tusten Town Board meeting.

Since November of 2002, Well #1’s sodium concentration has increased from 46 mg/l (parts per million) to 110 mg/l, and Well #2’s has increased from 52 mg/l to 72 mg/l.

Both wells are located under sand and gravel at Narrowsburg’s flats. According to Schalck, the Tusten Town Board ordered Highway Superintendent Nathaniel Feagles to stop using any salt to melt snow close to these wells.

“At the flats, water has no place to go. You’re basically injecting salt water into the wells,” Schalck said.

“We’ve pretty much stopped using salt on the flats, but salt has a residual quality,” Feagles said.

Concern arose when the discovered increases were compared to last year’s post-winter analysis results, which showed an increase over three months from 23 mg/l to only 40 mg/l in Well #1, and 30 mg/l to only 35 mg/l in Well #2.

The town board blamed the snow for this year’s two-fold increase in Well #1. At the board meeting, Supervisor Richard Crandall said, “The results do not appear to be a mystery this winter. This [high salt content] is a recurring problem for almost all municipalities who are using gravel wells. It’s hard not to use salt on the roads.”

In response to drainage problems on the flats last year, the New York State Department of Health insisted that the town find an alternative to their salt road de-icer within 60 days. Crandall then told the paper, “The main thing is no more salt. Magnesium chloride and lots of sand. That’s the future.”

Feagles confirmed that the town carried through with this commitment, saying “we used magnesium chloride this winter, a spray that keeps snow from adhering to roads, as well as a 50/50 mixture of salt and sand except for on the flats, where only sand was used.”

So if the town stopped relying on the salt de-icer, how can we explain the severe increase of salt in the wells?

Feagles said Tusten is in a watershed, and the state uses a 100 percent salt de-icer on Route 97, so a great deal of run-off finds its way to Narrowsburg’s main wells.

What is an appropriate response to the problematic salt levels?

“It is a serious problem, but the salt will only negatively affect people with severely restricted diets,” Feagles said.

When asked what would happen if the rising trend continues, Crandall said, “We would hope that would not happen.”

Schalck said, “At what level would the Department of Health tell us that we cannot draw from these wells anymore?” He said that over $50,000 is invested in Well #1.

Schalck also worried about the effects of salt on wildlife and plants. He noticed large clusters of browned pine trees and wondered about a correlation with salt de-icer.

Rita McKenzie of the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources in Indiana found that salt accumulation in roadside soil is a real problem for white pine trees.

“Sodium chloride, used on most roadsides, accumulates as a chloride ion in the needle tissue and damages the tree at the cellular level,” she observed.

Exposure can become toxic, the first sign of which is browned needles at the base of roadside trees.

“I believe salt is having an impact that people don’t notice. I have to take a stand and be responsible for the water. I can only make a recommendation, which would be that we use absolutely no salt on the roads,” Schalck said.